I

Put pen
To paper
And watch it curve,
Open, unfold, imagine
Worlds of places
Carrying you away
Off the flat and rectangular;
Day dreaming yourself
Into rainbows of colors,
Shapes shifting across the spectrum,
The wide open expanse
Of possibilities reaching out

II

From within.
Discover
The shapes come clean,
After some pain;
Prodigal sons and daughters
Torn from their portraits,
Lost in the newspapers,
In the news reels on television sets,
Becoming caricatures of dreams,
Masks of feelings
Glimpsed in the mirrors
Of the tilted canvas.

III

The paper
Folds hands
Folding paper dolls
Holding hands
Describing love and desire
Like braille speaking in tongues
In the silence of the streets
Where faces in the crowd
Ask questions with their eyes.

IV

Somewhere in the Yukon
Or Northwest Territories,
Beyond many rivers,
In uninhabited mountains,
Where fields of wildflowers
Still bloom, untouched.

I could stand here forever.
Sometimes I don't want to leave.